Newsletter

Hope, Change, Tax Evasion, and Ethics

President Obama’s first Secretary of the Treasury and Director of the Internal Revenue Service Timothy Geithner neglected to pay his taxes.

Mrs. Nancy Killefer, nominated by President Obama to become the chief performance officer for our federal government, withdrew from further consideration.

Nancy Killefer, who failed for a year and a half to pay employment taxes on household help, has withdrawn her candidacy to be the first chief performance officer for the federal government, the White House said Tuesday.

Killefer was the second major Obama administration nominee to withdraw and the third to have tax problems complicate their nomination after President Barack Obama announced their selection.

Tom Daschle withdrew on Tuesday as Obama's nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services.On Monday, President Obama still put his full support behind Daschle.On Monday morning, The New York Times officially declared the President Obama Honeymoon ended with an editorial that encouraged Tom Daschle to step aside.

Unfortunately, new facts have come to light — involving his failure to pay substantial taxes that were owed and his sizable income from health-related companies while he worked in the private sector — that call into question his suitability for the job. We believe that Mr. Daschle ought to step aside and let the president choose a less-blemished successor.

Mr. Daschle’s tax shortfall is particularly troubling because it comes on the heels of another nominee’s failure to pay taxes due. We were not pleased when the president’s Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, admitted that he had failed to pay tens of thousands of dollars in federal self-employment taxes while working for the International Monetary Fund despite having signed paperwork acknowledging the obligation.

Even The New York Times editors were scratching their heads over the absence of Obama’s promised high ethical standards.

Tom Daschle did the right thing – for himself and more important for the Obama administration – and withdrew his name from nomination as Secretary of Health and Human Services. He may have been propelled to do so by the news that Nancy Killefer, who was appointed by Mr. Obama to the newly created position of White House chief performance officer, had also withdrawn – citing her own tax troubles. The withdrawal of Ms. Killefer had left a lot of people, including us, scratching their heads and wondering what had become of President Obama's high ethical standards. It should not be hard for the new president to find high-quality appointees to both of these posts. Before he names them, he might have his team do a little more thorough scrubbing of their tax returns. Americans have the right to know that their appointed leaders pay their full share of taxes.

Long-time dedicated Obama supporter Tom Daschle was out of the White House.

Obama aides said Mr. Daschle also will not serve in the role of health care czar, a nonconfirmable post that would have allowed him to shape policy from within the White House.

The move comes less than a day after Mr. Daschle said he would move forward and Democratic senators came to his defense, saying the tax issue was an honest mistake.

The New York Times began to notice the missing pieces of Obama’s promises and lofty goals.

"During almost two years on the campaign trail," says the NYT, "Barack Obama vowed to slay the demons of Washington, bar lobbyists from his administration and usher in what he would later call in his Inaugural Address a 'new era of responsibility.' What he did not talk much about were the asterisks.

The Internal Revenue Service Survey, which was coincidentally released on Monday, reported that 89% of our fellow citizens thought that it is “never ok to cheat on their taxes.”A full 67% believed “everyone who cheats on their taxes should be held accountable.”

President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats expect the ordinary achievers to pay all their taxes.The tax money is needed by politicians to pay off supporters and to buy future votes.Such is the case with Obama’s economic stimulus plan, which even Democrats are now opposing in growing numbers.

It is high time for President Obama to present us with his promised high ethical standards.Obama’s honeymoon is over.It is time for him to get his White House in order.We can only hope and pray that Obama will now begin to change.